• Four Hundred Monitor, March 6

  March 15, 2023 Jenny Thomas

  March Madness is taking on a different meaning this year. Yes, it’s still the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament that fans look forward to every year, but March 2023 has also been a little crazy. Parts of Northern and Southern California have been covered in snow, burying roads and houses, disrupting power, and snapping branches off trees in areas that aren’t prepared for more than an occasional light dusting snow. The Federal government is attempting to stave off panic in the banking industry following the collapse of two banks. And let’s just not even think about world politics right …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 11

  March 15, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Even when there is not a lot going in with PTF Groups or security vulnerabilities or other things with the IBM i platform, there is always something going on with the IBM i PTF Guide. This week is a slow one, and so that gave us time to catch up on the links embedded within the Guide. Keep an eye out for them next week and also for a video log for Access Client Services.

  Here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last published:

  PTF Groups 7.5:

  • HIPERs (High Impact/Pervasive)

  PTF …

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• You Ought To Be Committed

  March 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There is a phrase that we learn as teenagers, concomitant with the kinds of peer pressure that close friends can bring to bear early in our lives to nudge us, that applies in an inverse way to a portion of the IBM i customer base, or probably more precisely, to the upper management at a portion of the company that thinks – erroneously – that getting off the IBM i platform is somehow going to magically fix their particular IT problems.

  All talk and no action.

  Don’t get us wrong. We are not trying to get people to move off …

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• Thoroughly Modern: What You Need to Know About IBM i Security

  March 13, 2023 Fresche Solutions

  On a weekly basis, the security experts at Fresche receive calls from IBM i organizations asking for help with ransomware and cyberattacks. These calls are from a broad range of organizations across the spectrum of industries and company sizes.

  The IBM i platform has a very strong reputation of being secure, but it’s a dangerous misconception that it is secure out of the box. We can’t tell you how many times we’ve seen an enormous lack of security configuration on the system. It’s often due to a lack of security knowledge and skills on IBM i. But many people still …

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• Spring Brings Events To IBM i Community, And More

  March 13, 2023 Alex Woodie

  As the calendar flips over from winter to spring, the IBM i community begins to stir in anticipation of in-person get-togethers. Many of the events continue to be virtual, but some, like COMMON’s POWERUp and WMCPA’s iCON, are expected to draw hundreds of people. And the calendar shows that IBM’s spring Tech Refresh can’t be too far away.

  The in-person fun kicks off tomorrow as members of the IBM i community descend on the Lake Lawn Resort in Delavan, Wisconsin, which is playing host to the Wisconsin Midrange Computer Professional Association (WMCPA) and its Spring Conference 2023.

   

  The three-day …

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• As I See It: AI-AI-O

  March 13, 2023 Victor Rozek

  Unless you think encouraging people to eat glass is a good thing, or you happen to revel in being compared to Hitler, you probably weren’t all that impressed with the recent Big Tech AI roll out. To say it was unimpressive would be a kindness. Arguably, it was a grade A, prime time, gold-plated disaster.

  Take Meta Platform’s online tool Galactica. Please. It was quickly yanked offline when, according to The Washington Post, “users found Galactica generating authoritative-sounding text about the benefits of eating glass, written in academic language with citations.” I have to admit, the citations were …

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• IBM i PTF Guide, Volume 25, Number 10

  March 13, 2023 Doug Bidwell

  Here is what is new this week: Fixes. To be specific: Long Term Support release: 9.2.0.10 client install image for IBM MQ on IBM i release level: 9.2.0.10-IBM-MQC-IBM_i. IBM MQ is also known as WebSphere MQ also known as MQ Series, and it is the message queuing middleware that Big Blue has been selling since 1993. Yup, that is 30 years ago, and this tool is one of the foundations of the microservices movement. It is Kafka-esque. Or, more precisely, Kafka is MQ-esque.

  Anyway, here is the rundown of PTF Groups by IBM i release level since we last …

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• Situation Wanted

  March 13, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  There have been a tremendous number of layoffs in the tech sector in the past several months, and we are grateful that the IBM i market is part of the economy but also somewhat set apart from the go-go tech sector that sometimes engages in irrational exuberance. But we also know there is a talent shortage and a skills gap in this IBM i market. The question is, what can we do about it?

  Well, The Four Hundred can do one simple and easy thing: We can start a Situation Wanted column, which are doing today to help get people …

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• The IBM i OS Base Is Older Than We Think, But Moving Ahead

  March 6, 2023 Timothy Prickett Morgan

  Hardware upgrades are costly in terms of money and while it is always exciting to get a new system with that “new computer smell” – and you know what we are talking about – at least IBM i operating system and systems software upgrades don’t carry such a high price – provided you are on Software Maintenance and you do proper testing on your software before you make a jump to a new release.

  The other great thing about IBM i systems software is that any given release not only runs on the current new Power Systems hardware at the …

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• Rocket Rolls Out IBM i Modernization Bundle

  March 6, 2023 Alex Woodie

  Rocket Software last week unveiled a new collection of tools designed to help IBM i shops elevate their game across multiple IT disciplines. Dubbed the Rocket Modernization Suite for IBM i, the new bundle brings together existing Rocket offerings in the DevOps, APIs, test automation, HA/DR, terminal emulation, and Web-enablement spaces. It’s all about lowering the barrier to adopting Rocket tools and improving customer productivity when they do, the company says.

  Like other software vendors in the space, Rocket Software has accumulated somewhat of a disparate collection of tools for the IBM i server. The Massachusetts vendor started its IBM …

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